


the pictures are all i can feel

by koolmcr



Category: The Last of Us (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Canon Lesbian Character, Canon Lesbian Relationship, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-13 20:06:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28909047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/koolmcr/pseuds/koolmcr
Summary: After everything, she still missed Riley. All the years and love and death and killing and not killing. She wishes she could tell Riley about everything. The real Riley, not some bullshit tag that she collected off the floor after running off when Riley was begging her to go- when she was coherent enough to see that she was losing her mind and Ellie wasn't.
Relationships: Cat/Ellie (The Last of Us), Dina/Ellie (The Last of Us), Ellie/Riley (The Last of Us)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 49





	the pictures are all i can feel

**Author's Note:**

> probably the only thing that BOTHERED me about tlou2 was that I could not find Riley's tags anywhere in any of Ellie's homes. Like come on. Felt weird she wouldn't have had it out when she had the robot that she gave Sam. So here we are. the cure pictures of you came on as I was finishing up, felt fitting even if there are...no pictures...that ellie has of riley:/ she probably couldn't go back and get that polaroid of her and riley. Also i keep calling them tags and not pendants, whoops.

"Who's 'Riley Abel'?"

Dina was lounging with her feet on Ellie's desk, holding the small metal circle up to her face. Somehow she'd wormed her way into Ellie's house after their farm rotation together. She was...persistent. Joel and Ellie had just come to Jackson not a month ago, and already Ellie had a friend. Well, sort of. Maybe. She wasn't sure. Dina was okay. But she asked too many questions, paid too much attention to her. It made Ellie feel a little bit invaded, if she was honest.

Ellie was almost leaping over to her, snatching the tag out of Dina's hand.

"No one."

"Yeah, okay. _No one_. Who was he, your _boyfriend_?"

Ellie's stomach felt cold, "No."

"How come you have some random Firefly's tag then?"

"I don't know. I just saw it around I guess."

Dina rolls her eyes. She's not buying it. She likes to tease the new girl, something about seeing her blush and flustered. It's nice, even if she knows it's a bit insufferable.

"Sure."

Her eyes move away from Ellie, back to the desk, settling on a sketch of an astronaut suit. "Shit, El. You're really good! You gotta draw me sometime!"

The conversation moves. Dina asks a billion and one questions. Ellie stands awkwardly in the middle of her apartment, answering them. Playing with Riley's tag in her pocket. When Dina leaves, she puts it into a drawer. It feels bad to hide it, hide Riley. But what if someone _else_ came in and started asking questions? It was too much. Too much to think about, to say out loud. So what's left of Riley, besides her consumed body probably in the mall still, lives in a drawer. But Ellie reaches for it every day anyway, so she guesses it doesn't matter. It isn't a big betrayal.

* * *

"Mmm, Ellie, can I ask you something?"

"Yeah, shoot."

Ellie's focused on drawing Cat, laying on her bed. Just being sleepy, existing.

"When did you know you liked girls?"

She stops and looks up from her journal, eyebrows shooting up.

"I don't know. Haven't really thought about it."

"No? Am I the first then?"

That makes Ellie blush. After the whole kiss fiasco smoothed over, she and Cat had become...something. They spent most of their free time together. Sometimes kissing, sometimes watching movies, sometimes tracing the ink on each other's skin, sometimes just laying in silence. Her time felt occupied in the best possible way, though Dina didn't seem to agree and was being mopey lately.

"Eh, not really. I don't think I always knew, but it feels like I just never had crushes on boys."

Cat shifts onto her back and Ellie grimaces. Guess that drawing's done.

"Who was your first crush, then?"

"Who was _yours_?

"Alright. Don't laugh. It was this...woman, when we lived in California. She was kinda the babysitter for all of us back in the day. I was, like, seven. I'd run off to pick flowers to give to her and get in a ton of trouble for leaving the little bunker space we were at."

Ellie's heart swells. She's so cute.

"That's so cute! Oh my god."

"Yeah, yeah. I was always a little dyke." Ellie flinches at the word, not used to it. Cat's so free and open, even when people call her that word with all the bad intentions in the world, she can still flip it around for herself. It's so admirable, something Ellie loves about Cat. Well, likes. Loves. Ugh, shit. She's gotta write about this later.

"Come on. I showed you mine..."

"Fine, fine." She hesitates. She hasn't thought about Riley for a little bit. Cat feels better to think about. "It was this girl when I was in military school in Boston a few years ago."

"Oh la la. Did you two room together? That's a classic. Remind me, I gotta get you to read this book, Sorority Secrets."

"No. She was just a girl. She was around."

Cat yawns. Sleepy, still. Nearly drifting off.

"Just some girl, huh? Nothing special?"

Not knowing how to answer that without bursting into tears, Ellie gets up. Sets her journal on her desk, shuts off the light.

"I think it's time for bed. You're a sleepy kitty."

"Ugh, come on. No making wordplay about my name."

She slips into bed, moving the blanket over her and Cat. Ellie always ends up being the big spoon.

"Babe...tell me more about this crush!" Cat's trying and failing at staying awake. It's cute how she gets whiny when she's tired.

"Can we talk about it tomorrow? Maybe after we get back from working?"

"Alright...I'm gonna hold you to that, my darling."

Her words make Ellie's stomach fill with moths. But Cat doesn't bring Riley up the next day. Or ever.

* * *

"Oh hey, I remember this."

Clearing out Ellie's apartment for the "big move" as Dina calls it, she finds a little circle with the Firefly symbol on it at the bottom of a desk drawer.

"You know, I still don't know who Riley Abel is."

Ellie grunts as she picks up a box full of clothes. How did she accumulate so many. "Come on, babe. We gotta get all this shit out and onto the cart before noon."

"Yeah, but I'm _with child_ and I gotta rest!"

It's a familiar scene as Dina tries to maneuver her feet up on the desk, they're a little more swollen than before, along her stomach.

"Alright, alright. Just chill there. I'm almost done, anyway. I just have...a thousand fucking more boxes of shit. God. Moving sucks. How did anyone do this before?"

"I guess they hired people, right? Like...the whole U-Haul thing, the vans with the fun facts on them?"

Another grunt. God she should get rid of some of this shit. Maybe just drop it off in town hall or something. "Yeah, I guess."

"Tell me who Riley was."

"Dina..."

" _Please_?"

The dark puppy dog eyes. Ellie cannot resist those. Dina's eyes are as vast as the night sky, if the sky was dark brown and not dark blue anyway.

"Okay. Okay." Deep breath. She puts down the box in her hands. "Riley was the friend I was jumped by infected with. When I got bit."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

She looks down, fiddles with her fingers. Dina looks wounded, regretful. Maybe she gets a little teary eyed.

"I'm sorry, baby. I'm sorry I brought it up. I just wanted to know."

"It's okay. Hey, it's alright. Don't feel bad. It's just...apart of my past. It's kind of hard to talk about for me."

"Okay. Are you okay?"

Ellie wants to laugh. Her pregnant girlfriend is blubbering in front her and she asks her if _she's_ alright. She loves her.

"Yeah. I'm okay."

She walks over and kisses her the top of head, brushes a stray lock of hair out of her face. "I really do love you."

"I love you too!" Dina wraps her arms around Ellie's middle. They don't finish loading up the cart until three.

* * *

The farmhouse feels unsettling when Ellie walks through it. Of course Dina and JJ left. There's only so much one person could do, especially with a baby. More stabbing guilt. She wants to cry, but she feels like a crusty towel that's been absorbing water then drying out over and over without being washed. Nothing there.

She ghosts through the empty house, eventually making it up to her studio. All her shit is still there. Well, most of it. The portraits she was working on of Dina and JJ are gone. A little hope pricks her heart. She opens a drawer to her desk, knowing that there'll be a familiar name on it.

God. After everything, _everything_ , she still missed Riley. All the years and love and death and killing and not killing. She wishes she could tell Riley about everything. The real Riley, not some bullshit tag that she collected off the floor after running off when Riley was begging her to go- when she was coherent enough to see that she was losing her mind and Ellie wasn't. Another thing that Ellie wants to cry about. There's too many of those these days.

She puts it in her pocket, settles her eyes on her guitar and fumbles through Joel's song.

Joel gave her a chance to live at the cost of so many other people's. Hundreds? Thousands? Millions? It's rather biblical in a fucked up way.

But she spent the last damn near four years hating it. Secretly hating that she'd been alive, wishing she'd died in the hospital. Lost her mind with Riley. Even when she thought she was happy, it was still there.

Dina flashes to her mind. She didn't hate her life with her. Maybe she hated herself...but never Dina. Never her Potato, either.

Maybe thinking you're happy is real happiness, even when the shit and trauma is still there. Even though you're still a mess. Maybe happiness doesn't fucking matter, a dumb abstract concept.

Joel loved her. He wouldn't want her hating herself. He'd want her to feel good, to love. Hell, that's the chance he gave her when he murdered that doctor.

Fuck.

She sets down the guitar and walks out of the house, towards Jackson. It's time for her to live.

* * *

"Hey, Mama, who's 'Riley Abel'?"

Ellie frowns when she sees JJ hold up that metal circle from out of her desk drawer.

"Why are you going through my stuff, Potato Head?"

"I dunno. I like finding stuff. You have cool books and drawings."

"Yeah, I guess I do."

"So? Who was Riley?"

He reminds her so much of his mother. Always with the questions.

"She was a friend of mine when I was around your age. She passed away."

"Oh. I'm sorry Mama."

"That's alright Potato. It happens."

"Hey guys, dinner's ready." Dina stops in the doorway, seeing her son holding the tag by the chain, the open drawer below. "JJ, what are you doing going though your mother's stuff? I thought I told you to cut that out."

He rolls his eyes, "I know. Sorry, Mama."

"Alright, go wash up."

JJ shuffles out to the bathroom and shuts the door, a little too hard. Typical teenager.

Dina takes the opportunity to wrap her wife up in her arms and kiss her, away from JJ's sighs and groans. He doesn't quite get the whole being in love thing just yet.

"Hey, you."

"Hey."

Ellie's eyes are fixated on the tag. How long had it been since she'd seen it? Even thought about Riley? Too long. Too long. She feels guilty.

"You alright, El? You look a little out of it."

"Yeah. Yeah. I'm okay."

"You sure?"

She swallows her spit. She's giving herself a headache with her eyebrows set so low.

"No, not really. Thinking about Riley. I miss her."

Dina responds by running her hand over the back of Ellie's buzzed head, fingers drawing a little pattern in the short hairs.

"I haven't thought about her in a long time. It sucks. It's been so long since I've seen her. I can't remember what she sounds like anymore. I barely remember what she looks like. Goddamnit." A tear seeps it's way down Ellie's cheek as she sniffs. She's in her thirties and she still fucking cries all the time. She leaks like a faucet.

"It's okay, baby. That's just something that happens when time passes. I don't remember Talia's voice. Or my mother's. It makes me sad too."

"I'm sorry."

"Sweetheart, it's okay. Don't be."

The bathroom door opens and JJ almost falls down the steps, ready to eat. "Hey, are you two coming?!"

Dina turns her head towards the doorway, "In a few minutes! Start without us!"

They hear a grumbled something like "alright" and the clinking of a plate. Ellie sniffles.

"I know it's okay. I know. I just...I _don't_ know. Riley's not like Joel. No one has memories of her besides me, she didn't have a whole town behind her. Fuck, I was really the only one who gave a shit when she ran off to the Fireflies. Her other friends didn't care. That dumbass kid Tino said it was a good riddance."

Dina nods and rubs Ellie's shoulder. She'd never heard her wife talk about Riley other than her being there during the whole bite incident.

"And when she came back and took me to the mall I was so happy. I really was. My best friend was back and we fucking tore up that mall. Then she dropped that she had to go away because of the goddamn Fireflies. And I told her not to. And she fucking ripped off this goddamn thing and I kissed her!"

She breathes, unsteady. Tears in her eyes and her throat.

"I kissed her. I loved her. I was in love with her. For like two seconds all I could think about was us running away and figuring it out and just being with her like that was the only thing that mattered. Then the fucking infected came and...and," Ellie sobs, slightly. Breathing isn't easy.

"It's okay, baby. It's okay."

She's a wreck. JJ can probably hear her from downstairs. Fuck. She can never keep it together. Moving away from Dina, she puts the side of her left index finger into her mouth, biting down the tidal wave.

Dina's at a loss, just rubbing Ellie's back as she tries hard to stop crying.

"I've never told anyone that. At all. That I loved Riley. Not even her. When she was fucking losing her mind and I didn't. I didn't. I'm still fucking here and she's still in that goddamn mall probably, unless someone shot her in the head."

"She turned?"

"Yeah. She wanted to. She said...she said she wanted to 'be all poetic and lose our minds together' and that's why I'm fucking here."

She still hates being alive sometimes. That's probably never going away. Guilt never goes away, not completely. But she doesn't want to tell Dina that. Not right now. Too much.

Her wife is quiet for a moment. Rubbing patterns, eyebrows knitted together. Dina doesn't want to say anything stupid.

"Can I say that I'm glad that you're here? And I don't want to...I don't want to say, like, everything happens for a reason. I don't think it does. And I'm not glad that Riley turned, no. But I'm glad that you made your way to me."

Ellie turns to face her. Soft, dark brown, kind eyes. Too kind for her acidic green ones.

"I know you've been through so much, Ellie. You're so brave. Don't fight me on that. You are. I couldn't have gone through that."

"You probably could've."

"Yeah, but I didn't. You did. And you're here. And I love you, Ellie."

"I love you, too"

She feels defeated for a moment. Sometimes she wants to just be sucked up by the storm inside of her, let it consume her instead of trying to hold onto anything bolted down.

"Can I have a hug?"

That gets a little smile. How long have they been together? Dina still _asks_ for hugs. And it's still adorable, even during one of her meltdowns. She nods and wraps her arms around her wife, puts her head on her shoulder.

"Do you want to eat? Want me to bring it up here to you?"

"Do you think JJ will be okay if you do that? I don't want him to be worried. Or feel bad. Like, he didn't do anything wrong."

"I'll field it and let him know you're not feeling good. He'll be fine."

Ellie produces a handkerchief from her pocket, finally wiping her tears and blowing her nose. "Thank you, D."

"I'll be right back with a plate."

Dina disappears out the door as Ellie sits at her desk, the drawer still open. Riley's tag glinting by the candlelight. She sighs and runs her thumb over the indentation of Riley's name.

"I miss you. I wish you were here."

She puts the metal to her lips and gives it a peck.

"You'd probably like Dina. And JJ. I wish you could meet them."

But it crashes on her that, of course, if things didn't happen the way they did that wouldn't happen. She'd either be dead, or maybe somewhere still alive with Riley. Living a different life.

That thought makes her feel guilty. A lost love. One she missed. Even though she had the love of her life just down the stairs, fixing her a plate she didn't deserve. It's not really like it is with Cat. Cat and her are still friends, but that probably comes from the benefit of them being two of the few lesbians left in the world. And also Cat being, you know, alive and not infected. There was time to be in love, fall out of love, and still find respect and admiration for each other after the fall out. Dina actually knows and likes Cat now.

She didn't have any of that with Riley. Riley was a sad ending. One she still cried about nearly 20 years later. Shit. That's too long. She's lived through more years in the in between than Riley was even alive for. Why was she still a wreck over her? It confused her.

Dina comes up with a plate, cup of water, and a small smile. She kisses Ellie's head and shuts the door behind her as the storm is still raining down.

* * *

Ellie doesn't go to bed that night. She sleeps, sure, but doesn't get a lot of it while slumped over her desk. Another thing to feel bad about, leaving Dina hanging and alone while she cries all night. Ugh.

The morning light strikes through the room, directly onto her closed eyes, and she wakes up. She feels tired. Her eyes hurt. Her back hurts. She's too old to be sleeping in chairs. JJ and Dina are chattering in the kitchen, he's probably making breakfast since Ellie didn't get up to do it. He's a good kid.

She rubs at her hurting eyes and looks down at her scribbled journal. All the flurry of tear stained thoughts and attempts to draw Riley from memory. She doesn't feel like reading through it and feeling like that particular brand of shit right now, so she shuts it and finds the goddamn tag underneath it. Riley haunts her.

Will it ever be okay? Will she ever get over it? Accept it once and for all that Riley is dead, she is alive? She's not even fully there with Joel. But then again, she didn't forget about Joel for months or years. Can forgetting be acceptance? Healing? Maybe not when it's so triggering to remember.

A soft knock raps on the door.

"Mama, can I come in?"

"Yeah, what's up?"

JJ looks so small in the doorway.

"Do you wanna come eat with me and Mama? I made scrambled eggs."

She doesn't want to say no, but she can barely face her son right now.

"I'm still not feeling too good. Maybe lunch?"

"Okay." He walks over and hugs her, she flinches a little bit at the sudden contact. "Sorry."

"For what?"

"Your friend. You must've really loved her."

Tears well, again.

"Yeah, I did. I miss her a lot right now."

"Do...you wanna talk about her? What she was like? Maybe it'll help?"

"Hmm."

"Like, what was her favorite food?"

"Son, we went to military school. You could hardly call that shit food."

He pulls back with an incredulous look on his face, "Military school?! You never told me about that! You went to military school?!"

She smiles a little. "Yeah, I know. Hard to believe your Mama following any one's orders other than your other Mama's, right?"

Ellie shares her stories of growing up with her son as he guffs and gaws at the inconceivable tales. Dina listens from the kitchen, her face softening as she hears her two loves.


End file.
